Weicker's Unnoticed Local Coattails

November 01, 1991|By DON NOEL; Courant Political Columnist

Tom Verchinski of Southington is town chairman of A Connecticut Party, Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.'s fledgling third party. He is also a candidate Tuesday for the Board of Finance, one of nine Connecticut Party candidates on the Southington ballot.

They run without formal support from the state party, but they're Weicker's kind of people, challenging relatively conservative Democratic and Republican establishments. And even without Weicker's working for them, they represent an interesting test of Weicker's coattails:

Their names will be easy to find on the top line of the ballot.

Even though Weicker's standing in opinion polls is at an all-time gubernatorial low because of his insistence on a broad-based income tax, these candidates don't find identification with his party a handicap.

A Connecticut Party as a formal organization decided not to nominate or endorse candidates in this year's municipal elections, choosing to wait for next year's legislative elections.

But the new party's open rules make it easy to get on the ballot by petition. State law requires the signatures of 5 percent of registered party members. Two of Southington's 29 Connecticut Party members would have been enough. Verchinski and his running mates signed each other's petitions at a planning meeting.

Diane Blick, the party's state chairman, says she's aware of fewer than two dozen candidates who have qualified for the ballot in six towns: besides Southington, two in Bloomfield, nine in Waterford, one each in Cornwall, New London and East Haven. There may be more; they didn't have to clear with her, but some phoned her as a courtesy.

Candidates must be party members. They had to switch registration from another party, by early February to satisfy state law, but unaffili ated voters could join the party up to Aug. 7 and qualify.

State law gives the party winning the governorship the top line on the ballot in any election for four years. If there are no Connecticut Party candidates, Republicans -- entitled to the second line by virtue of their gubernatorial showing -- get the top line. Democrats will have the third line, or the second if there is no

Connecticut Party candidate.

Most petitioning candidates -- often mavericks challenging an entrenched party machine -- are listed last on the ballot, unlikely to be found by any but committed voters.

Prominence on the top line may prompt more "impulse voting." No one knows; it's a new phenomenon that in a half-dozen towns this year, Connecticut Party challengers will be so readily found.

Southington's candidates -- one each for Town Council, and the school, library and water boards, and Board of Selectmen, two each for the boards of finance and planning and zoning -- aren't unknowns. Nor do they seem to be perceived as the town's scolds. They have roots in two local groups: one supporting school budgets, another pressing to clean up and eventually close a toxic-waste disposal firm.

They include professional and technical state employees, a retired town police officer, a professor of management at Central Connecticut State University and a local educator.

Most municipal candidates interviewed by The Courant's editorial board this year say the issue raised most often by voters is the state income tax. Candidates who oppose it usually say so; others have a carefully understated response that avoids a direct answer.

Southington's Connecticut Party candidates say they, too, are asked about the income tax. Their stock response is: "That's a state issue; we want to discuss local issues." They say that usually satisfies listeners.

Being identified with Weicker apparently isn't a handicap -- at least in campaigning.

Tuesday's election may prove a kind of watershed. If some Connecticut Party candidates in Southington or elsewhere win, they will demonstrate unexpected strength in Weicker's new party.

It may prove a useful vehicle for those who feel shut out by "politics as usual," as Weicker likes to put it.

That could in turn make his endorsement of legislators a more coveted prize in 1992 than it now appears, giving him new leverage at the General Assembly.